September 26, 2025
Published by 
Gabriel Ngo on September 26, 2025
Gabriel Ngo on September 26, 2025A personal account of the ways in which AI can preserve memories and facilitate the grieving process. “We should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that … With artificial intelligence, we’re summoning the demon.” – Elon Musk, businessman and entrepreneur, Tesla, SpaceX and X “Artificial intelligence will never be a match for natural stupidity.”– Unknown “A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.” – Alan Perlis, computer scientist and professor, Purdue, Carnegie Mellon and Yale University “In a sense, artificial intelligence will be the ultimate tool because it will help us build all possible tools.” – K. Eric Drexler, engineer and author I usually begin my writings with a quote – sometimes sage, sometimes satirical – to highlight the general […]
April 23, 2025
Published by Gabriel Ngo on April 23, 2025
Gabriel Ngo on April 23, 2025SCENARIO: Randall T. Smith and his wife, Petaluma (“Peta”), had owned and operated their own funeral home and crematory business, Mesa West Funeral Home & Crematory in Midland, Texas, for nearly seven years serving their community with the highest level of service at affordable prices. Then, in 2019, Randall was diagnosed with liver cancer, and in 2020, he passed away. Before Randall died, he told Peta that, “if you ever sell the business, I think it’s worth at least $1.4 million.” Randall and Peta, who were both licensed funeral directors and embalmers, had built Mesa West Funeral Home & Crematory on money they had saved up from years working for a corporate consolidator. Mesa was serving a solid 210 families a year, with total annual Revenue just north of $1 million by 2019. During peak COVID periods between 2020 and […]
December 23, 2024
Published by Gabriel Ngo on December 23, 2024
Gabriel Ngo on December 23, 2024“So to the best we can, what we do is focus on creating value for others, and how do we do that? We do it by trying to produce products and services that our customers will value more than their alternatives, and not just their alternatives today, but what the alternatives will be in the future.” – Charles Koch, Chairman & CEO of Koch Industries Creating value for others involves producing products and services that the customer will value more than their alternatives—not just alternatives of today, but what alternatives there will be tomorrow. There, I summarized the pithy quote with some inherent wisdom built into it. The end, right? Regardless of how you might personally feel about oil companies, billionaires, Koch Industries, or the Koch brothers in general, I believe this quote applies to this profession now more than […]
December 23, 2024
Published by Gabriel Ngo on December 23, 2024
Gabriel Ngo on December 23, 2024Scenario: Robin John Blake and his wife, Barbara, own and operate Rio Grande Funeral Home & Crematory in Laredo, Texas. For the past 17 years, they have grown their business by serving the community with an excellent reputation. In 2024, Rio Grande served over 350 cases two years in a row for the first time. Laredo, as a funeral service market, is unique in that the city and its surrounding areas still have a relatively low cremation rate, especially when compared to other border Texas towns like El Paso as well as the Rio Grande Valley further south toward Brownsville. Robin was born in Laredo, and after traveling the world having worked in hotel and restaurant management, he came back to his home state and met his wife, Barbara, in Austin years ago. While Barbara’s background was in event planning […]
November 25, 2024
Published by Gabriel Ngo on November 25, 2024
Gabriel Ngo on November 25, 2024Transparency’s Importance in Deathcare’s Online Pricing It almost seems as though The Dalai Lama’s quote is specifically directed at this crossroads where we are, concerning consumer sentiments and online pricing of funeral and cemetery services and goods. I know that you all are probably tired of hearing or reading about online pricing. In the future, we all anticipate having online pricing become a requirement by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in some form, shape, or fashion. For some of you, your state already has mandated that you publish your pricing online. This article, however, is not about the FTC, any mandates, or requirements, etc., it is about what consumers want in this ever-advancing technological world, and why you should give it to them: As of 2022, Baby Boomers make up roughly 21% of the population in the United States. Generation […]
June 27, 2024
Published by Gabriel Ngo on June 27, 2024
Gabriel Ngo on June 27, 2024Scenario: Oren Gibson is a fourth-generation owner-operator of Orville H. Gibson Funeral Home & Cremation Services in Sevierville, Tennessee. The business has been serving their community for over 100 years and is deeply and successfully entrenched in Sevierville with a sterling reputation. One Tuesday morning, Oren completed a routine monthly meeting with his entire staff and had just sat down at his desk to approve some invoices when he received a call from the receptionist. A lady named Missy was there to see him, and she had an urn in-hand. He peeked at his calendar and saw that there was not anything that had been scheduled, and the name “Missy” did not ring any bells. He had one funeral director on maternity leave and his other funeral director was off. Oren got up and braced himself for either what could […]
May 29, 2024
Published by Gabriel Ngo on May 29, 2024
Gabriel Ngo on May 29, 2024How to adapt to growing consumer demand for transparency and strategically navigate the FTC’s oncoming pricing requirements. Last month’s article, “Understanding Your Recovery Cost,” by Nelson Thulin, focused on appropriately pricing your services in order to cover your overhead costs. As a follow-up, this article focuses on what you should do to make your business more transparent to consumers once your pricing is in order. This involves answering three questions, which I will share in a bit, as well as understanding today’s consumers and the implications of why they increasingly demand transparency from businesses. Regarding the latter, it’s important to remember that the families you serve are simply a subset of consumers at large. This means they are influenced by the growing ease and experience they gain by patronizing Amazon, eBay and other online retailers. In practically every online experience […]
December 28, 2023
Published by Gabriel Ngo on December 28, 2023
Gabriel Ngo on December 28, 2023Scenario: Stewart Spector is a fourth-generation owner-operator of Spector & Steinberger Funeral & Cremation Services in Smyrna, Georgia. The business changed to its current name from its original name of Spector & Sons Funeral Home in early 2010 when Stewart’s key employee, Nell (“Nelly”) Steinberger, bought into the business. This was also the year that Stewart and Nell started their pet end-of-life service business, Rainbow Bridge Pets, since both were animal lovers as well. Spurred on by Nelly’s passion for the environment and greener alternatives, they decided to make the investment and offer only flameless cremation for their pet families, installing only a resomator in their newly built facilities. Because both Stewart and Nelly believed so much in flameless cremation or aquamation/alkaline hydrolysis as a “greener” alternative to flamed cremation as well as it being a “gentler” process, it was […]
November 28, 2023
Published by Gabriel Ngo on November 28, 2023
Gabriel Ngo on November 28, 2023Key Indicators to Elevate Your Virtual Presence In my last Memento Mori article, I wrote about the growing and essential importance of having your website truly be your virtual business as well as how online reviews are now more crucial than ever. However, that is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Relating your virtual business website to your physical location—and the general physical concepts regarding “curb appeal” and “location, location, location” being such vital components in real life—there are foundations you should understand to help ensure that you avoid “not standing out” and “being invisible” in a busy marketplace as the Seth Godin quote so eloquently captures. There are approximately 5.18 billion internet users in 2023 (versus a world population of about 8.1 billion)— that is 64% of ALL people on this earth utilizing the internet in some form […]
July 27, 2023
Published by Gabriel Ngo on July 27, 2023
Gabriel Ngo on July 27, 2023Putting together a winning team employing hourly workers and part-timers as a solid foundation. “Culture is defined and created from the top down, but it comes to life from the bottom up.” – Mike Smith, former Atlanta Falcons head coach and 2008 NFL coach of the year You’re probably already thinking that this quote is all well and good, but who has time for culture when your business is short a li-censed staffer or two (if you operate a larger business) and the other licensed staff is on vacation this week? I get it. Businesses across all professions and industries have been battling staffing shortages and talent retention challenges. To that extent, funeral home businesses are no exception. They are not only part of the rule but also have licensing requirement issues (in some states, dual licensing) to contend with […]
July 27, 2023
Published by Gabriel Ngo on July 27, 2023
Gabriel Ngo on July 27, 2023Upping Your Game as a Virtual Business “HARD CONVERSATIONS” and “NORMALIZING DISCOMFORT” are two concepts that funeral, cremation, and cemetery professionals handle and deal with daily. We all recognize the ideal of “being your best on the family’s worst day,” or something very similar, and take it as a rule in serving the families who come to us. Certainly, we all have been called on and have exemplified this in person through various aspects of serving families who need our services. But how do we continue to do this (much less do it better) in a “brave new world” where more and more consumers depend on the internet—whether it be in educating themselves before deciding or by reading reviews from other client families when deciding about choosing your firm? I published an article on e-commerce in the July 2022 issue […]
June 27, 2023
Published by Gabriel Ngo on June 27, 2023
Gabriel Ngo on June 27, 2023Legal Reality Check: Case Study #5 Scenario: Peter Smith is a third-generation owner-operator of P. R. Smith & Sons Funeral Home & Crematory in northeast Florida. He’s in his first few years leading his firm, following in the footsteps of his father, Mark, and uncle, John, who had followed in their father, Paul’s, footsteps. Through the pandemic-heavy years of 2020 and 2021, Peter’s progressive thinking and technology-forward approach allowed the family funeral home to thrive and gain market share throughout the communities they serve. Investing in a complete website redesign in 2019 is one decision Peter attributes to his early success. It transformed the website into a topnotch, “front door” virtual site that truly informs the consumer of the business’ unique designations, options, features and value proposition. The site presents the funeral home’s pricing strategically and transparently. The website also […]